Tag Archives: Standard Roman Orthography

Adoption of Cree Syllabics

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On the left, Tatânga Mânî [Chief Walking Buffalo] [George McLean] is in his traditional First Nation regalia on a horse. In the centre, Iggi and a girl engage in a “kunik,” a traditional greeting in Inuit culture. On the right, Maxime Marion, a Métis guide, holds a rifle. In the background, there is a map of Upper and Lower Canada, and text from the Red River Settlement collection.

This blog is part of our Nations to Nations: Indigenous Voices at Library and Archives Canada series. To read this blog post in Cree syllabics and Standard Roman Orthography, visit the e-book.

Nations to Nations: Indigenous Voices at Library and Archives Canada is free of charge and can be downloaded from Apple Books (iBooks format) or from LAC’s website (EPUB format). An online version can be viewed on a desktop, tablet or mobile web browser without requiring a plug-in.

By Samara mîkiwin Harp

Photograph showing the keys of a manual typewriter. Each of the keys, which are black, has two characters in syllabics that are white.

Cree syllabic typewriter created by knowledge experts from Cree communities, linguistics experts from the former Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, and Olivetti Canada Limited.
Olivetti Canada Limited, Olivetti News Magazine, June–July 1973, p. 2. (e011303083)

While the origins of Cree syllabics remain debatable, one thing is certain: Cree syllabics quickly became popular with nêhiyawak (people of the Cree nation) thanks to their accurate representation of nêhiyawêwin (the Cree language) sounds and the teaching of the syllabary at the grassroots level.

In the winter of 1841, nêhiyaw hunters and trappers from Norway House (present-day Manitoba) who set off to trade brought along hymns printed in Cree syllabics. In less than a decade, the syllabary spread to the west and east, with thousands of nêhiyawak becoming literate in syllabics. nêhiyawak usually learned how to read and write syllabics without the aid of missionaries. They taught themselves by referring to the syllabics chart. This knowledge of how to write Cree was transmitted through traders, friends and family. Some scholars say that literacy rates among the nêhiyawak surpassed those of the French and English settlers. Clearly, syllabics worked well to capture the sounds of nêhiyawêwin.

Pen-and-ink drawing of a man in a short jacket and long pants standing beside a birch tree. He is giving a lecture and holds a small book in his left hand as he points to several rows of syllabics etched on the tree trunk. There is a group of men seated cross-legged on the ground facing the man giving the lecture. Some are wearing hats, patterned blankets, buckskin jackets or shirts with bandanas. Another man, wearing a vest and holding a hat, is standing on the other side of the tree. He is looking directly at the man giving the lecture.

The Reverend James Evans sharing the Cree syllabics chart and hymn book that he collaborated on with Indigenous peoples. (MIKAN 2834503)

It is clear that James Evans created the physical type font (stamps for printing) for syllabics, and he played a role in helping to popularize them by printing a Cree syllabary chart and hymns in the Cree syllabary. With the help of Evans’s translation team, a book entitled Cree Syllabic Hymn Book was printed in 1841.

Unfortunately, neither Evans nor contemporary scholars gave proper credit to the Indigenous people who worked with him, an oversight rectified a century and a half later by Lorena Sekwan Fontaine:

“Evans’ translating team was largely responsible for the success of this independent printing. Team members were primarily of Aboriginal ancestry and were either bilingual or multilingual. For example, Thomas Hassell (Chippewyan) had learned fluent Cree, French and English; Henry Bird Steinhauer (Ojibway) had attended a mission school in Upper Canada and knew Greek, Hebrew, English, in addition to Cree; and John Sinclair who, as the son of an HBC officer and a Cree mother, was fluent in Cree.” (1)

Page from a book with a facsimile of a pale grey rectangular box on the top half that contains syllabic writing in black. The bottom half contains eight columns of typed words in black ink, mostly in Cree, organized on 12 lines. There are two typed English sentences at the bottom of the page.

Facsimile published in 1841 from the original Cree Syllabic Hymn Book, by James Evans, Norway House (present-day Manitoba), p. 23. (OCLC 1152061)

Page from a book showing a facsimile with 11 rows of handwritten syllabics in black. Two horizontal lines divide the top seven and the lower four rows. There are 10 rows of English sentences typed in black in the lower third of the page. Two horizontal lines divide the top six and the bottom four rows.

Facsimile of a hymn from the original Cree Syllabic Hymn Book, by James Evans, Norway House (present-day Manitoba), 1841. Published by the Bibliographic Society of Canada, Toronto, 1954. (OCLC 1152061)

To see a fully digitized version of the 1841 Cree Syllabic Hymn Book by James Evans, visit the University of Alberta Libraries’ Peel’s Prairie Provinces collection.

Four individual letters written in pencil in syllabics on sheets of paper. There are lines in syllabics that fill the pages. The authors’ signature in English are under these lines.

Group of letters written in Cree with some English by Chief William Charles and councillors Isaac Bird and Benjamin Bird regarding Treaty 6, February 1889. Before receiving their first treaty payment, the Cree leaders from Montreal Lake (present-day Saskatchewan) wrote to Queen Victoria asking for her compassion to their people, and their expectations that included money, food and clothing, tools and household utensils, livestock, seeds, and medicines. (MIKAN 2058802)

To read more about these letters and the English translations, see “An 1889 Cree Syllabic Letter” by Merle Massie.

Over time, syllabics continued to increase in popularity. They were used in government offices, street signs and personal correspondence. There was even a Cree syllabics typewriter, shown in the photograph at the beginning of this essay. The typewriter was developed by Olivetti in collaboration with representatives from various Cree organizations in Western Canada and Quebec. According to the 2016 Census, nêhiyawêwin is one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in Canada.

Cree syllabics had not only become popular with nêhiyânâhk (Cree country), but their use also spread to other languages such as Anishinaabemowin, Inuktitut and some of the Dene languages, by adapting the syllabary to those languages (see Inuktut Publications essay in Nations to Nations: Indigenous Voices at Library and Archives Canada).

Photograph of a white rectangular sign affixed to a wooden wall with nails. The sign has the name of a construction company typeset in black in English, syllabics and French. The company’s logo is on the left side of the sign. Directly below the sign on the right side is the number 355 in large font in black.

Cree Construction Company sign from Quebec, unknown location, ca. 1978–1988. Credit: George Mully. (e011218399)

Photograph of a close-up view of a light grey brick wall. There are two rectangular white signs attached to the centre of the wall. The upper sign has four lines of syllabics, and the lower one has five lines of syllabics. Both are in black ink. There is a ladder laying horizontally across the base of the wall.

Department of the Interior, Forestry Branch, sign in Cree, unknown location, unknown date. (e010752312)

Methodist Reverend James Evans as inventor of the syllabary is questionable at best. Evidence points to the fact that he was unskilled in the nêhiyawêwin, yet we are expected to believe that he created a syllabary that worked so well with nêhiyawêwin. While the theory that Evans conceived the syllabary is widely supported in mainstream history, I was unable to find anything concrete that supported this idea. The only evidence I could confirm was that he created the physical stamps for printing in syllabics. Archdeacon Horsefield, who translated the 1841 Cree hymn book, commented on Evans’s Cree abilities as follows:

“The vocabulary of the author is pretty extensive, but his syntax is poor: he uses plural nouns with singular verbs, and vice versa, is uncertain of word order and (not unnaturally) lost among some of the more complicated forms of the truly weird and wonderful Cree verb.” (2)

A researcher named Louis (Buff) Parry read Evans’s diaries and letters but could not find any evidence of how or when Evans invented “his” syllabics (3). Indeed, Christian churches had much to gain by claiming the invention of the syllabary. They could spread the word of the Bible while declaring that they had brought a great gift to nêhiyawak.

In time, Church and Crown joined forces to implement the Indian residential school system. By 1894, children aged 6 to 16 were forced to attend these schools. Part of these colonizing efforts included rules that restricted the use of Indigenous languages. Many children of these residential school survivors were deprived of their language due to the physical and emotional abuses their parents endured in the colonial school system.

nêhiyawak proved their resiliency by easily and quickly adapting to ways of writing, reading and teaching their language. We are capable and resourceful people who had ways of recording knowledge before contact. These ways may not have fit the Eurocentric models, but they existed. I have no doubt that we played a much larger role in the creation of Cree syllabics than is related in history books. It is my hope that we can continue on this path of language revitalization to undo the damage inflicted upon us by the residential school system, inaccurate historical records and colonization.

References

  1. Lorena Sekwan Fontaine, “Our Languages are Sacred: Finding Constitutional Space for Aboriginal Language Rights,” doctoral thesis, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 2018, p. 62.
  2. James Evans, Cree Syllabic Hymn Book, Norway House, N.W.T.: [Rossville Mission Press, 1841], p. 9.
  3. Lesley Crossingham, “Cultural director says missionaries didn’t invent syllabics, Indians did,” Windspeaker, vol. 5, no. 42, 1987, p. 2.

Windspeaker finding aid at Library and Archives Canada

Additional Resources Related to Cree Writing and Syllabics

Samara mîkiwin Harp was an archivist with the Listen, Hear Our Voices initiative at Library and Archives Canada. She now works in Woods Cree language revitalization and is further pursuing archival studies. Samara grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with Cree roots in both the Southend and Pelican Narrows areas of Treaty 6 in northern Saskatchewan. The first of her father’s family arrived in Ontario in the 1800s from Ireland and England.

Origins of Cree syllabics

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Version française

On the left, Tatânga Mânî [Chief Walking Buffalo] [George McLean] is in his traditional First Nation regalia on a horse. In the centre, Iggi and a girl engage in a “kunik,” a traditional greeting in Inuit culture. On the right, Maxime Marion, a Métis guide, holds a rifle. In the background, there is a map of Upper and Lower Canada, and text from the Red River Settlement collection.

This blog is part of our Nations to Nations: Indigenous Voices at Library and Archives Canada series. To read this blog post in Cree syllabics and Standard Roman Orthography, visit the e-book.

Nations to Nations: Indigenous Voices at Library and Archives Canada is free of charge and can be downloaded from Apple Books (iBooks format) or from LAC’s website (EPUB format). An online version can be viewed on a desktop, tablet or mobile web browser without requiring a plug-in.

By Samara mîkiwin Harp

Mixed-media artwork. In the centre is a rectangular black-and-white photograph depicting two rows of First Nations children seated and standing in front of a brick building. The photograph is overlaid on a background that is organized into vertical bands on both sides with horizontal bands that run across the top and bottom. The bands are mostly shades of purple, red and blue, and at the top, each has layers of multi-coloured curvilinear and angled lines that look like pencil crayons. There is a black band with white syllabics text running across the top of the photograph, and on the lower-right corner there is a small white rectangular form with black handwriting in English.

If Only We Could Have Our Stories Told, by Jane Ash Poitras, 2004 (e010675581)

This mixed-media work by Cree artist Jane Ash Poitras features a group of children at residential school awaiting the missionaries’ teachings. Church and Crown purposefully disregarded our teachings and stories in an effort to assimilate us. “If only we could have our stories told” expresses the desire of our people to reclaim our language and culture that were taken from us.

“In all the oral accounts of the origins of the Cree syllabary it was told that the missionaries learned Cree syllabics from the Cree. In the [Wes] Fineday account Badger Call was told by the spirits that the missionaries would change the script and claim that the writing belonged to them.” [Please note that in the literature on the subject, Badger Call is also known as Calling Badger and Badger Voice.]

Preliminary research shows that it is generally accepted that the Reverend James Evans (1801–1846) created Cree syllabics sometime during the early 19th century. In 1828, while teaching in Anishinaabe (Ojibway) country, Evans was immersed in “Ojibway” and became proficient in the language. In August 1840, Evans was stationed at a mission in the Cree-speaking community of Norway House (in present-day Manitoba). Anishinaabemowin (Anishinaabe language) and nêhiyawêwin (the Cree language) are in the Algonquian language family and are somewhat similar in their use of sounds.

Black-and-white illustration of a group of people seated on the ground encircling a kneeling man who is recording syllabic writing on a sheet of bark on top of a large stone. Several of the seated people hold sheets of bark with syllabics. A woman is standing in the right foreground and looking toward the group. She is carrying an infant in a cradleboard on her back. There are three teepees behind the group, and a forest in the background.

James Evans recording syllabics on birch bark with a group of nêhiyawak (people of the Cree nation), unknown date, illustration in Egerton R. Young, The Apostle of the North, Rev. James Evans, New York, Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., [1899], plate between pages 190 and 191 (OCLC 3832900)

Evans worked on the development of a writing system for Ojibway for several years. It is thought that this work formed the basis for his later success in developing a Cree syllabary (a set of written characters representing the syllables of the Cree language). By October 1840, Evans had printed a Cree syllabary chart, and in November of the same year, he printed 300 copies of “Jesus, My All, to Heaven Is Gone,” a short hymnal in syllabics.

Cream-coloured page from a book with black type. It has a chart divided into a wide centre column flanked by two narrow columns. At the top of the centre column is a line with language sounds, and below it are nine rows of syllabics. The left column contains nine sets of letters from the Roman alphabet that correspond to the syllabics, while the right column contains nine sets of syllabic characters and English letters. There are two typed headings in English at the top of the page above the chart. Below the chart are three typed lines in English and syllabics. The page number is located in the centre at the bottom.

Replica of the Cree syllabary chart developed ca. 1840, published in Egerton R. Young, The Apostle of the North, Rev. James Evans, New York, Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., [1899], p. 187 (OCLC 3832900)

Cream-coloured page from a book with a combination of English and syllabics in black type. The page is filled with five numbered paragraphs, each containing four lines in syllabics. The page title is in English across the top. Just above the paragraphs are two lines in syllabics and English.

The first hymn written and printed in Cree syllabics, ca. 1840, published in Egerton R. Young, The Apostle of the North, Rev. James Evans, New York, Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., [1899], p. 193 (OCLC 3832900)

Despite his seemingly incredible skill with nêhiyawêwin, Evans required the knowledge of an interpreter, Thomas Hassall, for the duration of his time in Cree country. Hassall was a Dene man who was able to speak Dene, Cree, English and French. Tragically, Evans accidentally killed Hassall during a duck-hunting trip and, it was rumoured, Evans himself never fully recovered from Hassall’s death. By 1845, the Reverend was facing charges of sexual misconduct toward three Indigenous women and was sent back to England to answer for his crimes. According to Evans’s brother, “before leaving Norway House for England, [James Evans] burned nearly all his manuscripts.” If we are to believe this account, it is quite possible that the physical evidence to establish the creator of Cree syllabics has been lost forever.

Further research suggests that Evans conceived his ideas for the syllabary from other sources that he never credited. According to the British and Foreign Bible Society annual report in 1859, “The idea he derived from an Indian Chief.”

Additional evidence pointing to the influence of nêhiyawak (people of the Cree nation) in the creation of syllabics has also been proposed. For example, the four-directional nature of the syllabics hints at a Cree influence, as the Cree ways of knowing utilize the four directional teachings. We also find evidence in missionary reports that “hieroglyphics” were “painted upon” pieces of birch bark before the arrival of the missionaries: “It was not until Missionaries were sent among the Cree Indians, that any other mode of conveying ideas, except orally, existed; if we exclude the rude hieroglyphics painted upon large pieces of birch bark.” Furthermore, nêhiyawak were known to have used birch bark for creating birch bark bitings. Using the eye teeth, the artist bites designs into thin pieces of birch bark, creating perfectly symmetrical designs when unfolded. This ancient art form can be achieved through a wide variety of folds. A typical folding pattern starts with a square piece of bark, which is folded into a right angle, followed by a complementary-angle fold that, when completed, results in what mathematicians refer to as perfect symmetry. This pre-contact style of art uses spatial thinking and reasoning to create records of ceremony, stories, events and later beadwork patterns. Similarly, Cree syllabics can be arranged in perfect symmetry. Cree oral history says that when the syllabics were gifted to the people from the spirit world, the syllabics were on birch bark.

It is my belief that today’s syllabics are ultimately the result of collaboration between numerous Indigenous people and James Evans. However, to delve deeper into their origins, learners must enter into the world of Cree oral history. My research into oral histories available online uncovered the story of mistanâkôwêw (Calling Badger), a spiritual man from the west in the area now known as Stanley Mission, Saskatchewan. In this account, mistanâkôwêw entered the spirit world and returned with the knowledge of Cree syllabics. A similar story exists about a man named mâcîminâhtik (Hunting Rod) who lived in the east. Fortunately, there are some recordings by Winona Wheeler and Wes Fineday, available online through the CBC, which discuss the Cree origin stories on syllabics.

Additional Resources

Samara mîkiwin Harp was an archivist with the Listen, Hear Our Voices initiative at Library and Archives Canada. She now works in Woods Cree language revitalization and is further pursuing archival studies. Samara grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with Cree roots in both the Southend and Pelican Narrows areas of Treaty 6 in northern Saskatchewan. The first of her father’s family arrived in Ontario in the 1800s from Ireland and England.